


romeo, save me, they're trying to tell me how to feel

by elsaclack



Series: collateral beauty [4]
Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: F/M, Romeo and Juliet AU, [shruggin emoji], anyways this was supposed to be a blurb, but as it turns out i have approximately -2 units of self-control, did u know ao3 won't allow the actual shrugging emoji, i'M SAD, in which jake is holt's protege and amy is wuntch's, inspired by owyn who is AMAZING, they meet when wuntch goes to the 99 to disparage holt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-31
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-12-21 23:01:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11954508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elsaclack/pseuds/elsaclack
Summary: B99 Au idea where Amy never worked in the 9-9 and instead has been groomed by Madeline Wuntch her entire professional career as her protégé, leading to a Romeo-and-Julietesque romance and rivalry between Ray Holt’s own protégé, causing them to have to hide their relationship once they have their asses in gear - Tumblr user stardustsantiago





	romeo, save me, they're trying to tell me how to feel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jormaperalta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jormaperalta/gifts).



> HI SO I'M DEAD AND INCAPABLE OF WRITING A PROPER NOTE JUST GO READ [THIS](http://stardustsantiago.tumblr.com/post/164794843834/stardustsantiago-b99-au-idea-where-amy-never) IF U WANNA READ THE WAY THEY MEET IN THIS UNIVERSE

Amy’s wearing red.

He kind of hates what it’s doing to him (good things,  _really_ good things, but things that Holt would deem  _massively inappropriate_ ) but not quite as much as he hates the fact that he can’t stop staring across the dance floor. Her dress is short (by her standards, at least), cutting off a couple of inches above her knees, giving way to the gentle curves of her slender calves. The dress itself is pretty simple as far as dress designs go - nothing crazy or bedazzled like Gina’s disco-ball-esque dress or blood-stained like Rosa’s - but man ( _man_ ) if it doesn’t look like that red thing was just made for her. Not too loose but not too tight either, neckline cut respectfully high without outright choking her. Her arms are bare up to her shoulders and right now one is folded across her middle while the other is bent at the elbow to hold her half-empty glass of champagne. The dark curls that fall in tantalizing waves down her neck to brush against her shoulders move with each nod of her head as she listens intently to whoever that guy in that dumb suit is talking to Wuntch. He can tell she’s wearing a little more makeup than usual but it’s her lipstick - specifically the fact that it’s the  _exact same shade of red as her dress_  - that has him ready to pitch himself head-first off the roof. She looks genuinely interested in whatever the conversation topic is but after a moment she seems to sense him staring, because her gaze flicks to him over Wuntch’s conversation partner’s shoulder; her smile, so small and secret, is distinctly heated. 

Jake can’t bite back a quiet groan. 

She’s toying with him and he’s dying,  _dying_ , because honestly he’s been fighting the urge to tangle his fingers in her perfect hair since the moment he first saw her but now he’s having to concentrate hard on not just charging across the dance floor to grab her arm and drag her into a janitor’s closet somewhere far away from this stupid Governor’s ball. She is, after all, the only reason he even bothered coming to this thing; Holt has spent actual  _weeks_ preparing him for the fanfare of it all, none the wiser to his actual motive.

He feels an elbow jostle against his arm, jolting him out of his literal hundred-yard stare. “Look alert, Peralta.” Holt admonishes him quietly, forcing a glass of champagne into his hand. “Mingle, for God’s sake. Wuntch has been circling the party like the shark she is, and if you don’t remain engaged, she  _will_ zero in on  _you_.”

Jake shakes his head slightly, forcing himself to stare up at the chandelier above his head until he sees spots in his vision. “Sorry, I’m a little…distracted,” he admits. He downs half the glass in one go and does his best to ignore the burning sensation of eyes on his face until Holt turns away.

It’s Amy, of course. And to his delight, she’s no longer even pretending to listen to whatever garbage conversation is still in-motion before her; she’s watching him blatantly, openly, eyes languidly roving the length of his body before landing on his face.

He arches a brow at her in an unvoiced question; her answer comes in the form of her quickly draining the rest of her champagne glass, leaning toward Wuntch to murmur something, and then turning toward the dance floor. She manages to meet his gaze one last time - a challenge shining in her dark eyes - before she disappears into the forest of bodies.

Adrenaline floods his system at once. He drains the rest of his glass in record timing and nearly drops the glass in his haste to abandon it on the table behind him. “I’m gonna mingle,” he mumbles over his shoulder to Holt before practically sprinting onto the dance floor.

It takes far longer than he’d care to admit to spot that flash of red between bodies but the moment he does, he’s locked in on it; it’s less than a minute later that he’s on her, reaching to touch her arm. It’s probably a good sign, he thinks, that he nearly collapses upon feeling exactly how soft and warm her skin is. But it’s  _definitely_ a good sign that, when she turns to face him, she does so with a definitively heated smile. “Took you long enough,” she murmurs, reaching to drape her forearms over his shoulders.

He very nearly shudders at the feeling of her fingers toying with the curled ends of his hair where they brush against his collar, reaching to steady himself by sliding his hands down her sides to her hips. “Gimme a break,” he says (he  _croaks_ ,  _croaks_ would be the more accurate term). “It’s not easy finding the spawn of the actual devil in a crowd.”

Her smile turns more snarky, more of a smirk. “And yet, I found you right away.”

It takes a minute. “Hey,” he says mock-indignantly. 

She laughs, the sound lighter and more tantalizing than anything else he’s ever heard, and suddenly it is his sole mission in life to hear it again. Her grip around his neck tightens, bringing her closer, so he lets his hands slide around her hips to her lower back. “Man,” she says softly, gazing up at him through her lashes. “I was hoping you’d have a sucky personality.”

He wants to make a quip, a joke, but nothing’s coming to him except a very faint sense of dread. “Why?”

“You’re Raymond Holt’s protege,” she says,as she laces her fingers together over the back of his neck. “I’m supposed to hate everything about you on principle.”

A beat passes. “Do you?” he asks quietly.

Her eyes shine as she studies him for a long, breathless moment. “No.” she finally says, so softly he almost doesn’t hear it.

His heart feels ready to burst, but he manages to contain his reaction to a bright, wide smile. “Good,” he says with all the conviction in his entire body. “The feeling is mutual.”

She smiles before the muscles in her throat seem to ripple as she swallows thickly. “So…what should we do about it?”

The hesitation lasts half a moment on his part before his brain finally catches up with what she’s actually asking. “Your place or mine?” he murmurs.

A smile slowly blossoms across her face, directly contrasting how rapidly her gaze darkens. “Mine,” she says.

* * *

It’s late on a Thursday night and Jake can see Amy’s bedroom window lit up from the inside up on the third floor of her apartment building. The light is soft and warm - the lamp on her bedside table, he deduces, the one with the ruffled lampshade and the delicate porcelain lamp stand. The one he nearly knocked off the bedside table the last time he was up there.

(She’d backed him into it, to be fair, so if he had knocked it down and broken it it would’ve been  _entirely_ her fault.)

So she’s home, which isn’t all that surprising - being anywhere else but home this late on a work night is strictly prohibited under Madeline Wuntch’s law.

The thought makes him grin as he jostles the pebbles in his hand as if he’s about to roll them like dice. His cell phone sits heavily in his back pocket, a solid reminder that he could just send her a quick text (or go  _real_ old-school and actually call her) and not risk waking any of her neighbors up, but the mental image of her face pinched so attractively the way it does when she’s torn between irritation and amusement - almost always when she’s looking at him - is more than worth the risk.

It’s with a sly, mischievous grin that he lobs the first pebble up at her window.

He can tell by the solid thunk that echoes across the street that he’s missed, instead hitting the bricks just to the right of her window. He pauses, a wince frozen on his face, waiting to see if anyone would appear in the windows surrounding hers to yell at him or threaten to call the cops on him. When no one does, he feels his shoulders loosen slightly, huffing out a relieved breath before rolling the pebbles still in his hand again. His sights are still set on Amy’s window above his head, adrenaline and excitement pumping through his system.

He lobs another one up and hits the wooden frame with a sharp crack. He winces again but doesn’t let it deter him - the third rock hits the bottom corner of the windowpane. There’s movement in the shadows along the curtains; a moment later the curtains part, revealing Amy’s face.

His heart shoots up into his throat as she pushes the window open. Her face is pinched in that adorably confused and irritated way, slacked and soft with sleep. He lifts a hand in greeting as she rubs her fingers over one eye, clearly trying to make sense of what she’s seeing. “Jake?”

“Hey! I was passing by and saw the light on in your window. Can I come up?”

He hears her exhale loudly as she twists away from the window. “It’s almost midnight, Jake,” she tells him in a voice thick with sleep. She leans back down against the window ledge, head almost protruding completely from her window. “We both have work in the morning.”

“I know,” he says, “but I don’t care. I - I wanted to, y’know. See you.”

It’s hard to tell from this distance, but it almost looks like her brows have drawn together in an upside-down V shape. She seems to deliberate for a moment - an uncomfortably long moment - before he hears her sigh. “I’ll buzz you up.” she says before she disappears from her window.

It’s a little strange, the sudden sense of foreboding that fills his gut, but he ignores it in favor of the pure excitement surging through his system. It’s been far too long since he’s been here, far too long since he’s seen her in-person without Wuntch or Holt in the room. Saying he’s missed her would be an understatement - he’s been  _craving_ her, desperate to the point of near-madness.

He can practically  _see_ Gina shaking her head in disapproval the way she did earlier when he’d broken down and confessed as much earlier.  _You caught feels_ , she’d told him disparagingly.  _You should never catch feels_.

He just doesn’t care.

What he does care about, however, is the fact that Amy’s already standing in the hall outside of her apartment when he rounds the corner from the elevator bank. She’s standing outside of her apartment clad in that threadbare flannel robe he’d seen her wearing as she made breakfast for them both the last time he spent the night here, but this time her hair’s not mussed from sleep and his hands and her face isn’t made serene from that morning-after glow; this time she’s got the robe wrapped tight up to her neck, tied in what looks to be the most complicated knot in the world. But it’s her face that makes him falter, her face that sends his gut bottoming out; what appeared to be slack from sleep out on the street is now very clearly pale and stained with tears.

He falters, and then he rushes to her. “What happened?” he asks as gently as he can as he grips her upper arms. Her arms tighten where they’re folded across her front at his touch but he doesn’t let that deter him, far too focused on the fact that she’s bowing her head and turning away from him to hide her tears. “You’re freaking me out, Ames, what’s going on? Hey,” he shakes her slightly, gently, forcing her to look up at him through eyes that are swimming in renewed tears. “Talk to me.”

Her shoulders quake and jerk with each of her uneven, stuttering breaths in. Each second that passes in silence doubles the tension tying his gut in knots. “I…” she stops, hiccups, and glances down at his chest. “I can’t see you anymore,” she finally whispers.

Ice, his entire body has turned to ice in an instant. “What?” he manages to force himself to say, only minutely aware of the fact that his grip around her upper arms has probably tightened to the point of pain. “You can’t - what?”

“It’s over, Jake.” she says a little more forcefully, clenching her jaw briefly at the way her voice cracks over his name. “It’s over. Go home.”

He turns his head away slightly, mouth hanging open, unable to make any sense of what he’s hearing. She looks a little more resolute, now, a little more firm - but the longer he stares, the more he gets the feeling that one strong breeze would crumble her to dust. “I don’t understand,” he says, the words foreign as they fall from his mouth. “What is this? What are you doing?”

“I’m breaking up with you.” she says before she seems to sniffle involuntarily. “It’s over, I’m done. I don’t want to hear from you ever again. Please leave, and never come back.”

“Amy -”

“ _Leave_.” The word is ragged as it falls from her lips and he retracts instinctively, pulling his hands away and knotting them together at his chest. She steps backwards - away from him - and rips his heart out with her. “I’m serious. Go.”

His whole brain is on fire with the pain of it, rendering him both speechless and motionless, unable to do anything but stare open-mouthed as she backs into her apartment and closes the door behind her. He hears the locks slide into place, hears himself exhale, and then hears the definitive sound of a body falling into a wall just beyond the door.

Instinct has him stepping forward, ready to bang the door down to get to her, but he stops himself after one broad stride forward. Away. She wants him to go away. She doesn’t want to see him anymore. It’s over.

Pain seizes his entire chest and he gasps, breath hitching in his chest. He can’t make any sense of this - it’s like he’s been shoved headfirst out of an airplane without warning, plummeting to the earth so fast that the moment he hits the ground his entire body just…disappears. It doesn’t make any sense - sure, they might be moving a little fast, but there was never a moment that felt uncomfortable or forced. He forces himself to stagger away from her front door, a hand stretched out to his right so that he can ground himself on the wall. What happened, what  _happened_ , why can’t she -

She can’t.

She  _can’t_.

He spins on his heel and dashes back to her door, suddenly ablaze with a mix of triumph and rage. Three times, he bangs his closed fist against the door, no longer caring if her neighbors hear. For far too long, they’ve let this go on. For far too long, they’ve let this dictate their lives.

She looks genuinely frightened when she opens her door a crack to peer out at him. “You  _can’t_ see me anymore?” He asks, well aware of how low and dangerous his voice is. “Or you don’t  _want_ to see me anymore?”

She hesitates, and it takes every ounce of control in his system to keep from shoving her front door open completely and barging into her apartment. “What - what difference does it make?” she asks, opening the door a little wider. “This is  _over_ -”

“Because you want it to be or because someone told you to end it?” he asks, and what little color is left in her face drains at once. “Yeah, I thought so. Why did you  _tell_ her, Ames? I thought we agreed to keep this a secret -”

“I  _didn’t_ tell her,” Amy snaps. “She went to the Nine-Nine earlier to talk to Holt and overheard  _you_ telling someone else.”

Heat floods his face. Gina, he’d been telling Gina - or, more specifically, he’d been asking Gina for advice. “I swear I wasn’t just talking about it to talk about it,” he says quickly, almost tripping over his words. “I was - I wanted to - I was asking for advice, okay?”

Her brow furrows. “Advice? About me?”

“About how to - to let you know that, um…that,” he stops and shakes his head, trying to sort his spinning thoughts. “That this is more than just, y’know, um…a…a friends with benefits kind of thing. For me. I just, I realized recently that we haven’t actually  _said_ that, and I was worried, because it’s not like that at all. At least, it’s not like that for me.”

Her facial expression softens into a look guaranteed to get his heart beating furiously in his chest, but when she closes her eyes she turns her head away and sighs bitterly. “It doesn’t matter anymore,” she says quietly. “C’mon, Jake,we’ve been doing this - this  _thing_ \- for, like, two months. It’s not like we’re in love!”

It’s a crushing blow but he forces himself to move past it. “That’s - that’s true,” he says (more breathlessly than he should’ve, as if the phrase was an actual physical hit), “but…I could be.”

This seems to steal her breath away, and suddenly her gaze is flooded with longing and her words from before disintegrate completely. “Jake…” she says softly, and every molecule within him  _yearns_ for her. “I can’t - I can’t. Wuntch doesn’t want me to -”

“Okay, okay, look. I get it. Wuntch doesn’t like me and doesn’t want us together. I…wouldn’t be surprised if Holt felt the same way about you. But I don’t care about Wuntch or Holt right now. I don’t care what they want. Because I want this,” he reaches for her and she lets him take her hand, “I want you. I want…I want  _us_. But I need to know, Amy - what do  _you_ want?”

For a long, agonizing moment, she seems paralyzed with indecision. But then her grip around his hand tightens and, while the little crease between her brows remains ever-present, her deep frown twitches up into a shy smile. “You,” she breathes, “this. Us. I want - I want us, too.”

He swoops down immediately, shouldering the door open so forcefully it bounces off the wall guard and swings shut behind him. But he’s deaf to it, all of his senses lost in the onslaught of everything that is Amy. He’s got her gathered up in his arms, hauled up to his height, pressed between his body and the wall next to the front door; it’s frantic and bruising and exactly what he needed to heal his broken heart. Her grip is different, harder, new -  _possessive_ , that’s the word. And he’s not much better with his head clouded with adrenaline and adoration and the sweet, familiar scent of her perfume. He’s home, he’s  _home_ ; he’d like to see Wuntch try to tear them apart again. He’s pretty thoroughly convinced it would take nothing short of a crowbar to wrench them apart at this point.

“Oh God,” she chokes as he quickly works his way across her jaw to latch onto that spot just under her earlobe that drives her wild every time. “Oh God, oh Jake, I - I missed you, I  _missed_ you, I’m so so  _sorry_ -”

He jerks his head back and quickly claims her lips again, certain that if she doesn’t stop saying those words in that voice he will absolutely drop dead on the spot. “Me too,” he mumbles into her mouth, wincing slightly at her tight grip in his hair. “So much. And you’re completely and totally forgiven.”

Her hands land flat-palmed against his shoulders and she pushes him back; he follows her lead a few inches, stopping short and holding fast with just three inches between their noses. “I really do want this,” she says, the perfect image of seriousness - save for the kiss-swollen lips and faint red mark on her neck. “And I want this for real. Sneaking around was fun but this - what happened tonight, what I almost did -” she shudders and he strokes his hands down her back soothingly “- I don’t want to hide anything anymore. I don’t care what Wuntch thinks or what Holt thinks, I just…I’m sick of being Wuntch’s pawn. She’s never steered me wrong before but this…this was  _horrible_.”

“I know.” he murmurs. “I just…I don’t want anything to happen to you professionally because of me. Holt’s told me stories - Wuntch can make your life a living hell.”

“I can handle it,” Amy says coolly, and despite the fact that anxiety is still knotting in his chest, he can’t stop the affectionate smile from spreading across his face. “I could always put in a precinct change request if it gets really unbearable, but I don’t think she’ll do that. I know too much.”

He arches an eyebrow, intrigued, but the curiosity can definitely wait until this roaring need surging through his veins has simmered. “Are you sure about this?” he asks softly.

She twines her fingers through his hair and pulls him down smoothly, her kiss reverent and firm. “Yes,” she whispers when their lips part a long moment later. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.” He grins and dives back in, bending slightly to hoist her up off the ground, his hands beneath her thighs forcing her to hook her knees over his hips. She laughs breathlessly - the best sound in the world, the absolute  _best_ sound  _ever_ \- and leans back slightly so that her shoulders bump against the wall behind her. “And for the record…I could be, too.”

The unbridled joy that pours through him washes thoughts of Holt and Wuntch away at once, leaving nothing behind but Amy to fill the deepest, darkest corners of his entire being. It would be the perfect time to say it - to tell her just how thoroughly she’s burrowed her way into his heart - but she’s watching him through those half-masted eyes that sparkle with amusement and joy and two months just isn’t enough time (three, maybe, he’ll mark it on his calendar) so for now he just dives forward  and claims her lips again and again and again.


End file.
